1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electrolytic process system, which continuously performs an electrolytic process such as plating, anode oxidation or coloring to discrete conductors such as a slide fastener chain which includes metal coupling elements embedded on fastener tapes or conductors such as carbon strips having a large electrical resistance.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are currently known a number of systems for continuously performing an electrolytic process such as plating to continuous conductors such as metal strips.
As shown in FIG. 6 of the accompanying drawings, one of such known systems comprises an electrolytic bath 1, an intermediate roller 2 having a large diameter, an arc electrode 3, and a pair of feeding rollers 4. The intermediate roller 2 and the arc electrode 3 are disposed in the electrolytic bath 1 in a confronting manner. The feeding rollers 4 are positioned above the intermediate roller 2 on opposite sides thereof. The arc electrode 3 is connected to the anode of a power supply, and the feeding rollers 4 are connected to the cathode of the power supply. A conductor 5 is guided via one of the feeding rollers 4, the intermediate roller 2 and the other feeding roller 4. Then, the cathode current is applied to the conductor 5 from the feeding rollers 4. When passing between the intermediate roller 2 and the arc electrode 3, the conductor 5 has continuously applied a plating liquid ejected from nozzles of the arc electrode 3.
With this type of electrolytic processing system, the cathode current is applied to an object to be processed from the pair of feeding rollers 4. If the object is a continuous conductor such as a metal strip, the cathode current can be continuously applied to the object while it passes through the space between the intermediate roller 2 and the arc electrode 3. However, with discrete conductors such as a slide fastener chain 8 having metal coupling elements 7 embedded thereon as shown in FIG. 7, no cathode current can be applied to any part of the discrete conductors passing between the intermediate roller 2 and the arc electrode 3, thereby preventing the conductors from being plated.
Since the feeding rollers 4 are located far from the arc electrode 3, the cathode current is still applied from the feeding rollers 4 to the object at a portion which is passing through the space between the intermediate roller 2 and the arc electrode 3. When the object is a conductor such as a carbon strip having a large electrical resistance, the amount of cathode current is reduced since heat is generated by the current flow in the object. Therefore, a large cathode current must be to be applied to overcome such inconvenience, which means an increase in power consumption and a decrease in processing efficiency.